“Stop!” I half-panted, half-giggled. “Stop! You’re making me dizzy!”
With a careful, controlled movement Kai put me down at my feet, a breathless smile on his face. “Do you feel ridiculous yet?”
“I feel young,” I gasped out. “I feel so young.”
“I feel like that too,” he said, chest still heaving as he gazed far out in wonder. “It’s funny how places you’ve been to a thousand times before can look so different when you’re seeing them through someone else’s eyes.”
“How does it look to you now?” I asked, tracing with my eyes the beauty of his sunlit profile, his mouth, his jaw, the masculine column of his throat.
He turned, and our gazes locked once more. “Mystical. Remote. Beautiful beyond words.”
All the fear and uncertainty of the past few days dissolved in our mutual appreciation of this moment. Relieved at last, I filled my lungs with breath and faced themystical, remote, beautifulblue sea, the whole scene enriched by its resplendent relation to him.
Yes, I decided.A life worth living.
???
Kai’s holiday cottage was a tiny, sun-bleached structure, with a shingle roof, a blue wooden door, and square windows overlooking the beach. The window boxes were bare of flowers, and the cobbled path leading up to the doorstep was age-scrubbed and crunchy with grains of sand.
Inside, it was dollhouse-pretty, dressed in old furniture and white wallpaper with elegant blue flowers. The windows were hung with sheer, lacy curtains, lush, yellow sunlight filtering through them, and the couch and two armchairs circling the low coffee table were decorated with mismatched pillows in shades of powder blue and cream. The built-in shelves on the walls were laden with books, age-faded spines emerging between porcelain knickknacks, crystal vases, and silver candleholders. There were candles everywhere, most of them half-burned, and picture frames too, some hanging on the walls, others arranged neatly atop the mantle of the fireplace.
Curious, I picked one up, featuring a father, a mother, and a boy, a very young Kai with his hair cut close to his head. His father was tall, strong-looking, and blonde, to my surprise, and his mother was beautiful and lovely-eyed, like he was.
Mother.A sinking stone of a word.
Slowly, gingerly, I passed my fingers over the cold, dust-kissed glass of the frame as if hoping to touch her, as if touch were the magical vessel through which this memory would unravel for me: loud laughter, setting the timer for the camera, everyone getting close, closer, hugging and smiling. A family. I could not even imagine how it would feel to be a part of such an assortment. To belong to someone so completely as to be claimed as theirs.Anya? Oh, yeah, she’s my daughter.What did it mean to be someone’s daughter? What pleasures and responsibilities came with this title?
People in books and movies so often defined themselves by who their parents were and who they were to them. So perhaps it was a good thing that I had only myself to be defined by. My mistakes. My choices. Perhaps my unique aloneness was a gift the Center had given me, a wellness far superior to the mundane ties of family.
Perhaps.
“I know it’s not much,” said Kai, gazing around as though he too was seeing the house for the first time.
“No, Kai. It’s lovely,” I reassured him, returning the picture to the mantelpiece where it belonged.
Nodding, smiling, he trailed past the kitchen, a warm, cozy corner of the house with a small window above the sink overlooking the golden field, and striding further down the creaky hallway, he pushed one of the doors open. “Bathroom,” he explained cheerfully, switching on the light before moving on to the next door. “And this will be your room.”
Neither of us stepped inside. My gaze darted between him and the half-open door. “Is there another room?”
He made a noncommittal gesture with his hands, his face heating. “Oh, I’ll take the couch. I used to sleep there all the time when I was a kid, so don’t worry about it.”
The hallway, narrow as it was, narrowed still, the walls closing in on us as if to magnify Kai’s imposing physical presence.
Feeling heavy-limbed and oversensitive all of a sudden, I slid past him and stepped inside the room. It was as big as the living room with a curtain-framed window, a chestnut wardrobe, precious like an heirloom, a quaint vanity table with a tray of old perfume bottles atop it, and a double bed, unmade, the stripped mattress glowing pure white in the morning light, the newest thing in the house, I would guess.
“There are pillows and bedding in the wardrobe,” Kai assured me. “They’re all clean, but we should probably give them another wash just to refresh them.”
“It’s a big bed,” I pointed out with a coy little smile. “Almost like it was made to fit two people.”
“Right,” he chuckled, rubbing a hand over his nape. “But this is not why I invited you here.”
I cocked a brow, playful despite the heat simmering in my bones. “You know, Kai, believe it or not, Icankeep my hands to myself.”
Amused now, he crossed his arms before his chest and leaned against the doorframe, which was just wide enough to contain him.The sheer size of him, I thought.His broad shoulders and big hands and this house in which we are alone and on this bed, which is unmade and new. Like me.
“You sure about that, Anya?” he joked, all in good nature, but I could tell he was thinking the same thing. The room. The bed. Our perfect, absolute aloneness.
“Tell you what,” I hummed in something like a challenge, “if the temptation becomes too much for me,Iwill do the gentlemanly thing and move to the couch.”
